Murat Tolga Resim Sergisi

Doku Sanat Galleries in Teşvikiye, Istanbul, is showing Murat Tolga Resim Sergisi, a solo exhibition by the Istanbul-born painter Murat Tolga, from 15 October to 7 November 2026. The gallery lists 56 works: 47 oil paintings on canvas and nine watercolours on paper. They range from 25 by 25 centimetres to two canvases of 150 by 200 centimetres.

Tolga paints people and animals. In the watercolours, each 35 by 25 centimetres, heads meet sea creatures. A bearded man wears an octopus like a cap, another head is crowned with a red lobster, and a third figure carries a large fish across his shoulders. Paintings in the press images show groups of figures holding a violin, a drum or a clarinet, with cats among them and houses behind.

The announcement stresses how thickly the paint sits on the canvas, so that the material itself is felt. It describes some figures as withdrawn and silent and others as caught up in expressionist movement. Sea life also filled Derinlikler, his 2023 solo exhibition at Galeri Soyut in Ankara, which took the seas as its subject and drew on his many years of diving. Metafor, at the same gallery in 2022, set oil paintings beside ceramic sculptures fired at 1040°C.

Born in 1966, Tolga graduated in 1990 from the Painting Department of the Atatürk Faculty of Education at Marmara University. He worked in graphic design before turning to painting, and he paints in a studio in Caddebostan. He has held a solo exhibition at Doku Sanat every year since 2022, and the announcement presents this as its first solo show of the new season. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm.